Encouraged by the commercial success of his voyage, Smith was sent out in the following year, still in the employment of the Plymouth company, to establish a colony in New England; but through the violence of tempests he was compelled to give up the endeavour. Again he went out, but his crew mutinied, and he was finally captured by French pirates and carried into France. But the spirit of this brave man never forsook him; he escaped alone from Rochelle in an open boat, and arrived in England, where he devoted himself with all that ardour which was natural to his character to excite an enthusiasm towards his favourite scheme of the colonisation of New England. He published a map and description of the country, and visited in person the gentry and merchants of the West of England, suiting his promises of success to the character of the classes whom he addressed; to the merchant he proposed commercial enterprise and the establishment of cities, to the nobleman vast and wealthy dominion, and to the lover of leisure and indulgence presented pictures of an Arcadian life, with the pleasures of “angling and crossing the sweet air,” as he himself words it, “from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea;” but from all, with a blameable want of candour, he concealed dangers and difficulties. He succeeded in arousing a spirit of enterprise. New plans of colonisation were formed, and Smith was appointed admiral of the country for life. So far was comparatively easy; great difficulties, however, arose in the obtaining a charter for the new undertaking. The London company, jealous of a rival, threw difficulties and impediments in the way. It was not till two years had passed that a charter could be obtained. In November, 1620, King James granted what is distinguished among the New England historians as the “Great Patent,” by which the whole of North America, from the 40th to the 48th degree of north latitude, “excepting such places as were already possessed by any other Christian prince or people,” was granted wholly and entirely, with full rights of jurisdiction, traffic and settlement, to forty noblemen and merchants, incorporated as “The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering and governing of New England, in America.” Such a grant, which was intended to comprise everything, and secure and hasten colonisation, defeated its own object, and led to nothing but disputes. The English nation itself remonstrated, through its members in the House of Commons, on such an exercise of royal prerogative for the benefit of private individuals; and the French, who had already for seventeen years had possession of various trading stations on the coast, ridiculed and defied this wholesale appropriation.